Panorama Glass Roof

Convertible feeling, or even better? This is the question being asked, when it comes to the new windscreens which continue all the way up, giving an almost completely glass-roof. No need to worry about the safety factor, in the rear there is a stable cross-beam which provides the necessary stability in the event of a possible overturning. One thing you'll have do do without however, is the traditional interior light in the vicinity of the rear-view mirror which is still there, because it is mounted through adhesive on the glass anyway. Also possible, is that the han-holds on the A-pillar/s are no longer available.

Indeed, you don't really have to do without anything. Whether the increased glass area is also responsible for more weight than a metal roof, remains to be seen. The worry of more intense interior warming is also ungrounded, in the roof area the glass is strongly tinted, allowing only about 10% of the sun's radiation to come through. The windscreen section allows about 5 times as much. The place where you'll feel it the most, is in your wallet, because such features are an expensive extra.

Convertible fans don't mind this at all, they want to experience their surroundings with all their senses. However, this means, for some buyers, a thin metal plate overhead, especially in the case of a folding metal roof. In contrast, the gigantic windscreen/roof offers an, apart from the rear-view mirror, obstacle-free view. If the sunrays are too intense, one can simply draw the blind from the rear, then it's just like it was before.

In the production, the piece of glass is cut to fit from an enormous sheet and the edges are ground. A constant high temperature is necessary to form the glass plate, purely by gravity, into the required shape. The changeover, from the windscreen to the glass roof area is more streamlined that it would be be with a sheet-metal roof. In any event, the whole component consists of laminated glass, which makes it difficult in the production, using a suitable amount of vacuum and then reheating it, to create a seamless joining of the glass to the integrated alkathene sheet.

It may be interesting, to hear what the insurance companies have to say about it. 05/10